Legacy
by reallyneedsahobby
Summary: Slight Historical AU. The Doctor did say that he would take Madame de Pompadour to see the stars. And in a way, he did. Eventually. Takes place after "End of Time" and "A Million Points of Light."


**Warning**! Spoilers for Doctor Who: "End of Time, Part 2" and "Digimon Adventure 2: A Million Points of Light."

So this story is a crossover between Doctor Who and Digimon, with a Star Trek reference thrown in (all of which are owned by their respective companies and/or corporations and/or creators). This is a not for profit story and is purely done for the enjoyment of the internet community. No malicious intent is intended.

I began to play with this idea after I saw the season finale for the second generation kids and wondered, "How the hell did Yamato go from being a musician to an astronaut?" It eventually turned into a Doctor Who crossover that made the Doctor Yamato's source of inspiration to go into space.

The story is also a bit of historical alternate universe: Madame de Pompadour had two children by her husband (and 2 miscarriages later on), only one of which survived until around the age of ten, her daughter Alexandrine-Jeanne Le Normant d'Étiolles, nicknamed "Fanfan." As this is a fictional story, I am making it so that Alexandrine-Jeanne lived long enough to birth at least one child, hence the slight historical AU. This change is done with no intent to harm the reputation of the real Madame de Pompadour and any descendents from her family otherwise and is only done for the sake of the fictional world. No malicious intent is intended.

Also, I did a little math and since Digimon came out in 1999 and in the American version, Yamato was around 12 and in the second adventure, he was around 16, then corresponding with the Doctor Who timeline to the "End of Time" (which premiered in 2010 so I'm going to go with that) that would mean that in 2003, Yamato would be 16, so in 2010, he would be around 23.

Yamato really did not know what drove him out of his hotel room at 3 in the morning. There was not anything wrong as far as he could tell. He just needed to get out. He had been to France before and knew his way around enough not to get lost and he more or less spoke the language fluently.

His life was going great. His band had recently made a huge splash on the international charts, and while they were rather low on the radar outside of Japan, the Teenage Wolves were still popular in the underground music industry. It was why he was in France to begin with. There was enough buzz about the band that it warranted an actual world tour, this time without the fate of the planet hanging in the balance.

His relationship with Sora was not suffering either. In fact, he had made a trip to the jewelers a couple weeks ago and had purchased a very important ring with a very important question that he wanted to ask. He still kept in good touch with his friends and family. There was nothing wrong. So why did he feel as though there was something missing from the perfect picture?

He stopped on a bridge overlooking the Seine, and stared at the water. It was unbelievably quiet. The moon shone brightly and the lights twinkled in the reflection of the water like fireflies. He could not see any stars though, which was a shame. It was far too bright for that. Yamato sighed and leaned on the thick railing, crossing his forearms over the cold stone and staring off into the distance. Really, what was wrong?

"Nice night, isn't it?"

Yamato turned his head to the right and saw a tall man with wild brown hair, though nowhere near as bad as Taichi's, and wearing a brown trench coat over a blue pinstriped suit. He had on old, white converse high tops and was mimicking Yamato's own position. But that was not what interested Yamato about the man the most. That was reserved for the man's eyes. They were old eyes, and they had something terrible in them, like an old pain that kept on rearing its ugly head. The look of someone who was forced into something that they had not been ready for but stayed because of some obligation or reward that had unexpectedly come with it. Yamato knew how that man's eyes looked because he had seen the same look on his own face during their first trip to the Digital World all those years ago and so many times after it.

"Yeah it is." Yamato turned back to the water and began to wonder about what to do if the man continued to talk to him. He didn't have to wait too long to find out.

"I love France. No scratch that, I love Paris, or maybe just the Seine. Not quite sure, it will probably change soon but there you go. Right now I love the Seine. Don't you?"

He turned and looked at Yamato expectantly with a lazy grin on his face. Yamato muttered a, "Yeah, it's nice."

"Been a long time since I've been to France, when was that? 1882? No, that was that other thing. No, 1764? That sounds about right. I'm the Doctor, by the way." He held out his hand for Yamato to shake, and Yamato did, after a moment of just staring at it. He much rather preferred the bowing. Less ways you could mess up when everyone knew what was expected of you.

"Ishida Yamato."

"Oh right! Japanese, last name first, first name last. Hmm… Yamato Ishida, or Ishida- san, or Matt, that works too if you're an American I suppose. They like to change things a lot. Never really liked going there, like to stay in England if I can. But you've got some European in you. French probably, if your hair is any indication. But in any case, Yamato Ishida, what are you doing out here at, -" the man licked his finger and held it up as though he was checking the wind direction before saying, "3:47 am?"

"… You could tell the time by just doing that?" Granted, Yamato had seen weirder things, namely that one particular summer all those years ago, but seeing someone do something odd in the middle of a completely normal night in Paris was just, strange.

"Oh, no. There's actually a clock tower right there." Yamato looked to his left and, sure enough, there it was. It was now 3:48. "I only did that because I thought it got a bit chillier."

Yamato ignored that that made no sense by any stretch of the imagination and asked the man, "How did you know I was French? Blond hair doesn't automatically mean French."

"True but you look a lot like someone I knew once."

"Oh, who?"

"Doesn't matter, she's dead now." His voice was bother terse and sad, making Yamato drop the subject with ease. Living with his family, he knew the signs well.

"Who are you exactly?"

"Oh right," the man said, honestly surprised that he had not told Yamato his name, "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Just the Doctor. And you never answered my question. What are you doing out here?"

"I don't know." Yamato sighed, "I just am okay?" He rounded on the Doctor suddenly and asked with a bit of anger, "Why are you here?"

"Oh, looking for someone." Despite the Doctor's casual comment accompanied by a shrug about finding a person that Yamato would probably never meet, Yamato still felt an old surge of fear. After the Digimon had been made public all over the world, there had always been those who feared the digital creatures. Some even resorted to violence. Yamato had been at many of the pro- Digimon rallies that were crashed by the anti- parties; he knew how far those sorts of people could go.

The Doctor appeared to be an expert at discerning the emotions of others because he said, "No, no. Nothing like that. No it's for something else." He gave a deep sigh and continued, "I'm here to fill a promise for an old friend. I've got to find someone you see."

"Who exactly?"

"Someone who is a lot more important than they realize right now." Yamato wanted to ask what he meant but he didn't, instead choosing to look at the part of the Doctor's face that he could see. The terrible look was back as the Doctor thought back to a past that Yamato could not see. The Doctor looked up and sighed slightly, "Shame we can't see the stars right now." The city, even at night, was much too bright to see any stars. They would be able to see only the very brightest ones, but even that was a bit of a stretch.

Yamato looked up again and for some reason, asked, "You ever wonder what's out there?" The Doctor looked at Yamato with an odd expression on his face. The terrible look faded slightly into a more amused one. "I mean, the Digital world exists but that one was made by us, I guess, I mean, we're still not sure. They're data, but they're real. And if they can be real then, what about out there? I mean, the Earth moved! It moved across the sky and there where those Dalek things and the government kept saying it was a hoax but it really wasn't. I would know when something's not human." The Doctor bit back a smile at that statement. "Besides, it would be very lonely if we were the only ones."

"Yeah," the Doctor said slowly and quietly, "very lonely."

"Sorry," Yamato apologized, "I'm just having an early life crisis." He gave an uneasy laugh but the Doctor just looked at him with a small smile.

"Been there, many times. What's bugging you?"

"It's really not- I mean, you need to be somewhere and it's late and-," Yamato ran out of excuses when all the Doctor did was give him an expectant expression and a raised eyebrow.

"I don't know what I want anymore. I always wanted to be a musician and I am one, we're pretty big and I'm thinking of asking my girlfriend to marry me," he smiled softly when he thought of Sora, "but it's just not what I think I'm supposed to do anymore. I've been so many places and done so many things and I want more but there's nowhere else to go." The last part was said quietly and Yamato looked down at the dark water again.

"Well if you can't go forward," the Doctor said with a large grin on his face, "then what about up?"

"You mean-"

"Yup," the Doctor popped the 'P,' "Space, the final frontier for humans. Eventually you lot will fly so far and you will change the universe. Every step humans take now is just one more brick laid in a never ending path. And they'll keep laying them until the very last star has gone out at the end of all universes."

There was a long silence. Yamato asked, slightly frightened of the answer he would receive, "Who are you?"

"That's the question isn't it? Soon I won't even know. Right now, all I am is someone who's looking for someone else. I found you instead. How much do you know about French history?"

If words could give people whiplash, Yamato was sure that he would have it. "Not much really. My mother is French and I used to visit here a lot when I was younger but other than that…"

"There was a woman once. He name was Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, or better known as Madame de Pompadour. I made her a promise, so long ago," whispered the Doctor. "I told her I would take her to see a star, any one that she wanted. But I was too late to show her. Time works in ways that are not how we would like them too. It's not straight. It's a big mess and I'll miss it when I'm gone. Just like I missed her."

"I don't understand what you mean," Yamato said. The clock tower rang four times and the night was growing lighter slightly.

The Doctor looked at Yamato intently, his eyes shining the slightest bit. But at the same time, he was not actually looking at Yamato. Yamato would not know it, he never would, but the Doctor was seeing Jeanne kneeling in front of her fireplace and calling out to him. He remembered seeing her hearse pull away from Versailles to go back to Paris. Only 42, she had died so young. But one of her children lived and so did her children and their children, all the way down to Yamato and Takeru, who lived so far away from their ancestor's home but despite the couple of centuries between them, they were so like Jeanne that the Doctor could see her so clearly.

He needed to make good on his promise to her, despite her being dead for nearly 300 years, he owed her that much.

The Doctor could feel his life slowly slipping away. The once comforting beating of his hearts had turned into a ticking time bomb and he was dreading the day they stopped beating. Very rarely did he have time before he died, time to go back and say good-bye to people and give them one final gift. He was not there when Jeanne died, and it was something he regretted for a long time. This was his gift to her. Telling Yamato what to do, planting a seed and pointing him in the right direction. He would never make it to a star, not even close. But he would lay the foundations for his own descendent to do so. After all, Hikaru Sulu had to get the space bug from somewhere in his family line. The Doctor's only regret was that it would take so long to give it to her.

"I'm dying," the Doctor said honestly. "I'm dying and I'm trying to do things that I should have done long ago but I kept putting it off. Do me a favor Ishida Yamato. Look at your family history, see where that leads. Madame de Pompadour wanted to see the stars; maybe, you'll find that you do too." And the Doctor walked away, leaving Yamato standing in the early morning light wondering what exactly just happened. Off in the distance, he heard an odd whirling sound and ran to it. He saw an old fashioned blue police box just before it faded out and then he was suddenly alone.

Yamato walked around Paris for another hour before his feet took him to the hotel again. When he entered his room, Gabumon woke up, asking, "Where have you been all night? I was getting worried about you."

Yamato smiled softly at his best digital friend and said, "Sorry, I just needed to clear my head a bit, I'm better now."

"Oh, really? What made you better?"

"I just had a long talk with a stranger, it was very enlightening." He sat down on the bed and pulled his laptop to him asking, "Hey, do you know if there's anything we're supposed to do today?"

Gabumon looked at him confused, "Not that I know of. I think today was our day off."

"Good, I need to visit my grandparents." Yamato opened up his web browser and began to look at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Meanwhile, decades later, the Doctor stood off in the distance on the surface of Mars as he watched Yamato and Gabumon land on the red planet.


End file.
